Andrea Mitchell: Should We Judge Her?

I have watched with interest the statement and comments that arose out of journalist Andrea Mitchell’s announcement that she has had breast cancer and is back to work with a great prognosis. The blogsphere is up in arms about her word choice and whether she should use her platform to discuss personal information or health care agendas.

How can I comment on what she said or how she said it with a clear conscience? I have said many things I wish I could take back in my life, fortunately not any on network television in front of millions of people. In my personal and professional relationships, I try to put myself in the other person’s shoes. It’s easy for me to do this with Andrea Mitchell since I have had breast cancer twice, both times caught early and with a “terrific prognosis.”

Before we judge, I think it’s important to see the world from her view. She had her breast cancer detected in a routine screening mammogram. It goes without saying if you had yours revealed in the same way, you would be a proponent. If you were a young woman at diagnosis, saw your breast cancer in 3-D imaging, and knew that mammography is not quite as accurate for younger women with dense breasts as it is for older women, you, like me, might be a huge fan of MRI technology. So much so that you may participate in a study and allow your films to be shown at conferences like I did.

While Mitchell’s word choice has caused quite a bit of controversy, we must remember that although “cure” is not a word I have heard in breast cancer forums, if you had early-stage breast cancer that was treated, you would like to believe you are “cured.” Sure, she could have done better. She’s a journalist after all. She could have explained that in reality, there is a high survival rate with early detection (which is very true). She might have mentioned that the percentage of women who die of this disease is decreasing as we make some progress in treatment and screening, and the age of diagnosis is creeping frighteningly low, although still only a small percentage of breast cancer diagnoses occur in premenopausal women. She could have talked about the need to find a cure for one of the 288,000 American women who found out they had breast cancer in 2010.

In the end, though, I found it way more offensive when I watched Larry King Live in 2006 and Sheryl Crow stated she was getting radiation for systemic treatment of breast cancer. Well, that’s just plain wrong. Radiation is local treatment. She also said it was “better” than chemotherapy, and that is just wrong too. It is different than chemotherapy because chemotherapy is in fact, systemic treatment. She added that she wasn’t a candidate for chemotherapy because it wasn’t in her lymph nodes. As one of many women who have had chemotherapy with no node involvement, I will tell you it is more driven by the type of cancer and the pathology than lymph nodes alone. She also professed the need for screening, and I didn’t hear of anyone giving her a hard time. But she gave flat-out incorrect information to millions of viewers. Granted Andrea Mitchell is a journalist, and Sheryl Crow a singer, but she wasn’t reporting on breast cancer. It was a personal story.

It’s always bothered me. Not because she didn’t have the right to tell her story in her interview, but because without malice, she propagated some myths and fed incorrect information to a huge population of people. And because she is Sheryl Crow, people believe her. I wish I called in to the show and told them. But I am not a doctor, just a two-time breast-cancer patient who did her homework.

I think that is the bottom line. When you are a public figure, you have the ability to use the power for good or bad. How would you use yours?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Suzette Lipscomb

Suzette Lipscomb has done the cancer dance twice in her young life. Originally diagnosed with an aggressive form of invasive ductal breast cancer at 36, she endured six long months of chemotherapy and then...read more

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